The Judiciary Police (PJ) apprehended a “body packer”* from the west African Republic of Sierra Leone on Sunday, seizing a total of 941 grams of cocaine that he had concealed inside his body, PJ spokesman Leng Kam Lon said during a special press conference yesterday.
The on-duty supervisor of the PJ Narcotics Division, Lei Hon Nei, identified the suspect as a 44-year-old male surnamed Barry who told police that he was a businessman.
According to Lei, based on intelligence, the Judiciary Police (PJ) identified Barry as a suspected drug courier arriving in Macau on a flight from Thailand on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. After Barry entered Macau, police officers subjected him to an X-ray body scan, which revealed the presence of foreign objects inside his body. The police then called an ambulance to transport him to a hospital for further examination. Lei said that medical assessments and additional X-ray scans confirmed the presence of internally concealed objects, after which Barry was kept in the hospital for observation.
Lei noted that by around 6:30 p.m. that same evening, Barry had initially excreted 22 egg-shaped capsule-like objects containing a powdery substance, commonly referred to as “drug pellets”, Lei said. From Sunday to Tuesday, Barry excreted an additional 34 pellets, totalling 56. The police later confirmed that the powder inside the pellets was cocaine.
Lei added that Barry was recruited by a drug trafficking gang in his home country. Under questioning, Barry admitted to trafficking drugs by ingesting drug pellets after receiving an initial payment of US$1,000 (8,000 patacas). He told police that he flew to Macau via a connecting flight from Thailand, and the gang had pre-booked a hotel guestroom for him in the city centre, where he would expel the drug pellets for trafficking to nearby countries, revealing that he was promised by the gang he would receive an additional US$3,000 afterwards.
The police seized a total of 941 grams of cocaine, with an estimated street value of 1.8 million patacas, along with US$840 in cash from Barry.
Barry was transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing a charge of drug trafficking.
* So-called “body packers” are drug traffickers who swallow multiple small, tightly wrapped packets of drugs (like cocaine or heroin). They then travel and later retrieve the packets from their stool after arriving at their destination. This is extremely dangerous, as a packet can rupture internally, causing a fatal overdose. “Body packers” are one of the several types of so-called “drug mules”, i.e., low-level operatives in a drug trafficking organisation. Their primary job is transportation, not the production, financing, or high-level distribution of the drugs. They are considered expendable by the criminal organisations that recruit them. – DeepSeek
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the hooded “body packer” to a PJ van outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: Ada Lei
This undated handout photo provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ) displays the 56 drug pellets that had been hidden inside the drug mule’s body, along with US$840 in cash, a plane ticket and a mobile phone seized from the suspect, in a press room of the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters in Zape yesterday.
